Inescapable (16 page)

‘The copycat
strikes again. How’s your analysis of the other homicides
going?’

‘I’ll ask for
an update. I was hoping, while we were here, that we could visit
the college where Watson went on his rampage.’

‘We’ll see what
Jackson says about this problem. We’ll go look if there’s
time.’

14
^th
April.

Fox had left the
dispersal of Jackson’s solution to their bot infestation problem to
the techs who had arrived with it the fix. Hundreds of robots, each
about the size of a big hornet, all of them tiny hunter-killer,
vertol aircraft, were being released into the air ducts. Using a
swarm AI system to fan out and explore the entire system, the
robots were actually prototypes for far smaller machines, but
Jackson was quite confident that they would do their job.

Their job was
going to take some time, however. Even the dispersal was going to
take time since the machines were prototypes, reprogrammed over
night to do a slightly different job. The techs were going to be
monitoring the swarm for most of the day to be sure there were no
mishaps. Fox took the opportunity to do some sightseeing.

They had called
Chicago the ‘Windy City,’ among other things, back in the day. The
reason for the nickname was in dispute, but there had been a number
of tall buildings set on the shore of Lake Michigan and those had
funnelled the breezes from the huge body of water into winds which
had, at times, howled through the manmade canyons. Replacing those
with even larger buildings in an effort to keep up with New York
had only made the ground-level airstreams more unstable. Chicago
did not have the same kind of Sprawl that New York and most of the
other metro regions did because trying to live amid the constant
flow of air down there was not easy, and because Chi-town had come
up with an alternate solution.

From the top of
the MarTech building, which was one of the three largest towers in
the metro, you could see the Bastion which curved around the outer
limits of the old city like a shield wall. It was not actually a
solid wall of buildings. There were roadways through the mass of
high-rise multi-unit housing, slideways, frequently dysfunctional,
pierced and wound around the buildings. The Bastion was the Sprawl
of Chicago, put up because of the sudden influx of people following
the big geological events of 2041. The north-west of America had
all but emptied, and it had mostly flowed into Chicago.

So there was
the jagged wall of apartment blocks and arcologies along the edge
of the lake, and the more regular but distinctly less aesthetically
pleasing mass of the Bastion further out, and between them was
Downtown, which had been named because it was shorter, for the most
part, then the two zones delineating it. A little like the MCD back
on Manhattan Island, Downtown consisted primarily of buildings
which looked like they had been put up a century earlier. Most of
them had not: Chicago had taken a fair bit of damage from the
Cascadia event and the Yellowstone ash release.

The Hall-Cooper
College of Arts sat in the northern part of Downtown and occupied
several city blocks with stone-built buildings which might have
belonged to some Ivy League establishment and formed something like
a giant, medieval cloister. The students did not live on site. The
college owned a number of multi-unit blocks nearby, all tastefully
constructed to match the local environment, which housed the
majority of its student body, so they were never too far from the
rarefied atmosphere their parents were paying through the nose for.
Once they were through the gates, they might as well have been on a
different planet.

‘The physical
isolation seems more extreme when one sees it,’ Kit noted as Fox
stood in the open area which formed the centre of the college.
Arranged around a square, there were four grassed areas divided by
paved walkways and featuring a statue of the college’s founder,
James Hall-Cooper, in the centre. Students were allowed on the
grass only on designated days of the year in the summer according
to the v-tag signs which sat along the edges of the green
areas.

‘Yes,’ Fox
agreed. ‘The visual isolation is more than the real situation. If
you
know
where the exits are it’s easy, but people would
have been panicking and the gates aren’t obvious.’

‘According to
the reports, Watson entered through the north-west gate and began
firing more or less immediately. The first couple of victims
survived their wounds.’

Fox looked
across at the corner of the square Kit had indicated. ‘He was
herding them. He wanted them running ahead of him, into the
quadrangle here. Once he’s out in the open, he can pick his
targets, fire bursts into tight groups to maximise the panic and
the wounding.’

‘Most of the
people he hit here were wounded rather than killed. He used
standard, jacketed, caseless rounds which tended to punch through
and cause injury to a second victim. He walked across to the main
office structure on the east side, shooting at random. He changed
magazines twice, according to the police reports.’

‘He’s not
trained. He has to know his time is limited, but he’s not been
trained to do any of this. The guy was a model student before he
snapped, right?’

‘More diligent
than his upbringing suggests. He came from money and was on a large
allowance which he rarely came close to using in its entirety. His
parents were reported to have said they were worried about him not
socialising enough, but his friends and teachers indicated that he
was simply devoted to his work. He
was
physically fit,
athletic, above-average reflexes, but he had never shown any
indication of interest in firearms.’

‘Girlfriend? Or
boyfriend?’

‘None regular.
He was not celibate, but there was no one significant in his
life.’

Fox turned,
looking up at the large, yellow stone building which housed the
primary administrative offices. ‘So he marches in there and gets
serious.’

‘Very. Out
here, there were seven deaths and thirty-eight people injured. Once
he got inside, the numbers shift significantly. Nineteen dead, four
injured. Those four were probably saved by prompt action from the
EMTs. All four of them were caught in the blast from a grenade, but
shielded by closer victims.’

‘A grudge
against the college’s administration?’

‘If it was then
he had never indicated problems before the event.’

‘And his choice
of massacre music? Was it Martian Death Cult, you said?’

‘Yes, his
parents blamed the band for their son’s sudden change in
temperament, apparently having never heard the track.’ Music began
playing in the background as Kit continued; the song was a
ridiculously happy sounding ditty even if the singer’s gravelly
voice seemed more suited to something with a lot of screaming and
heavy bass riffs. ‘It was a comedy piece they recorded as a break
from their normal work. Normally they
are
the kind of thing
parents believe twists young people into killers. The chorus of
this one is “It’s the end of the world. There’s no way out. Babe,
let’s get naked and bone.”’

‘Poetic,’ Fox
decided. ‘Byron would have been right down with those sentiments.’
She scanned around the public portion of the college again, just
getting a feel for the area. The authorities were not going to let
her in the admin building, and there was likely nothing to gain by
it anyway. ‘Okay, seen enough? I saw a coffee shop on the corner
that looked quite nice.’

‘You have a
meeting with the other Palladium executives in sixty-eight
minutes.’

‘I’m aware of
this, That’s why I think the coffee would be a good idea. Can you
order an intravenous feed for the actual meeting?’

‘Research
suggests that that would be medically unsound.’

‘Crying shame
right there.’

~~~

General David Mark
George Graves had been something of a legend even while he had
still been active in the service. He had left, citing a desire to
spend more time with his family, while Fox had still been in the
Army. Rumours at the time had suggested that he had been pushed:
his politics, or rather his desire to keep politics out of his
work, had not been in favour with the brass.

He had to be
eighty now, but his physical presence was quite remarkable. Almost
six-four, he towered over everyone else in the room and he was
still massively built. A pale man, still fit, still muscular, his
age told around the eyes and brow, and also in the fact that his
once military-grade shaven scalp now sported a slightly messy cap
of pale blonde hair which fell a fair way down the back of his
neck. His eyes… His eyes were grey and had lost a little of the
deeper blue they had in photographs Fox had seen of him, but they
were still sharp, appraising, taking in the woman he was shaking
hands with as one might analyse a tactical threat.

‘First
Lieutenant,’ Graves said, his big hand enfolding hers. He was using
her old Army rank. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’ He had a strongly
accented voice. Southern states, Fox thought, maybe Texan, but his
education and long removal from that environment had taken the edge
off a little.

He was, of
course, gripping her right hand and she squeezed. ‘General.
Obviously I’ve heard about you. I was sorry to have never served
under you.’

He peered at
her for another second. Out of the corner of her eye, Fox could see
Jarvis biting his lips and got the feeling he had been through the
same introduction to the big man. ‘That is quite a grip you have
there, Lieutenant.’

Fox leaned
forward a little. ‘I lost that hand up to the elbow early this
year. It’s cybernetic.’

Graves lifted
his head and let out a roar of laughter. Jarvis relaxed noticeably.
‘Excellent!’ Graves exclaimed, a broad smile splitting his face.
‘One of Jackson’s contrivances?’

Her hand freed,
Fox lifted it and flexed the fingers, just to make sure he had not,
in fact, crushed anything vital. ‘He had a hand in it, if you’ll
pardon the pun. I’ve got a couple of pretty powerful computers in
there that they couldn’t have implanted in flesh and’ – she fisted
her hand and popped the slim, ceramic blade out from between her
middle knuckles – ‘this can come in useful for opening tins.’

‘Well, they
only got me in here so that we could meet and we’ve done that.
You’ll call me David. I’ll not be generalled too much.’

‘If you’ll call
me Fox.’

‘It would be my
pleasure.’ Graves turned and looked down the boardroom table at
Eaves. ‘Was there another reason for getting me in here with the
killer robots?’

‘We don’t think
assassination is the plan,’ Eaves said. ‘Besides, if one of these
things burst in through an air vent and fired a micromissile at
you, you’d just bounce it off your jaw.’

Graves stroked
his, very solid, jawline. ‘It’s not as strong as it was. I’m
getting old and the hide’s not as tough as it was. You think you’ve
got this problem locked down, Fox?’

‘I think we
have the problem identified and Jackson’s little attack helicopters
will hunt down the problem in time. To be honest, this is going to
continue to be an issue until they get Yliaster into production and
the commercial sensitivity issue goes away.’

The ex-general
walked over to a cabinet at the side of the room where coffee had
been set out. ‘Anyone else want some of this?’ he asked, setting
out four cups even before anyone had replied. ‘Alice, I assume
you’re having your tea?’

‘Yes, sir,’
Vaughn replied, her voice barely audible. The facilities manager
had been looking more timid than usual since Graves had walked
in.

‘It’s NIX we’re
dealing with, of course.’

‘I’ve found no
absolute proof,’ Fox told him, ‘but they seem to be the most likely
culprits.’

‘You and I both
know you’ll never find absolute proof. You’re unlikely to find
anything but a supposition. NIX don’t make mistakes they can’t
cover up. They have their fingers in so much high-level politics
it’s amazing that they haven’t managed to take over the country
entirely. There were damn good reasons why the intelligence
agencies were divided as they were. Pushing them together to “cut
down on bureaucratic overheads” was just exactly what some of those
political minds wanted. They gained control over every source of
information this country has and the power to utilise that
information as they saw fit. Everyone in the Capitol knows that the
oversight on NIX is nowhere near sufficient.’

‘And no one has
the political momentum to do anything about it.’

‘Precisely. It
would require something quite extraordinary to wake up the populace
and get them to take NIX apart. It’s possible that NIX would not go
quietly. One of the reasons I decided to step up and back Jackson’s
personal toe in the security pond is that I think he may be one of
the few people who can do anything about the situation.’

Fox grimaced.
‘I hate politics, David.’

‘Unfortunately,
I think every police officer in the country is going to have to get
very interested in politics, very quickly.’ Graves turned back to
the table. ‘Let’s all take a seat and we can run through what plans
we have for Fox’s investigative division. Jackson says you won’t be
dragged out of fieldwork, young lady, but we need to think about
the future, plan for expansion.’

‘Peachy,’ Fox
replied, taking a seat and wishing it might eject out through the
clear ceiling and into oblivion.

15
^th
April.

MarTech’s Chicago
arcology was strongly associated with MarTech Services which
handled computer hosting and administration, software solutions,
and also hosted a significant number of internet virons. They would
run systems for other companies who outsourced the administration
of their company networks as well. One of the reasons that the
Palladium investigative division, i.e. Fox, was to be based in New
York was that, due to its main tenant, Chicago lacked
laboratories.